The Effacing (Book 1.5): Valley's End (5 page)

   She didn’t realize Baker watching her. If she did, she’d probably spank his rebellious ass like a newborn baby all the way back to the group. But in the heat of their situation, she would most likely keep him along, scream on him after the one-cut event was finally over.

   The rain continued to pour. The clouds from the implosion were finally settling into a wrapping mist as canals of rain water sped along the curbs and into the city’s drainage system. Maria stood on the corner of Piper and Alder street, just behind an open drain cover, where the downpour’s rapids waterfall-splashed below. She was lucky to see the opening before her. If she hadn’t stopped and looked both ways before crossing the street, she would have almost certainly ended up underground.

   She checked her ammo and skipped over the hole, trotting off in route to Valley’s End,
The
– burning –
End,
between the lightly fuming or battered vehicles for extra cover, keeping her eyes and ears open to what may have been up or down the street lying in wait.

   Baker followed Maria precisely – to the detail – in her footsteps, keeping low and being observant from about four eye-straining yards back. He moved when she’d nearly vanished through the mist, doing well until he crossed Piper and Alder. He didn’t see the hole, swallowed rain, gasping as he dropped. It was all too unexpected – how he’d wanted to be a part of something and ended up being a part of something he did not want to be a part of – although he did instigate his predicament. It may have been too soon for him to truly think, but if he would have, his thoughts would have been
, I should have stayed in the house
, while with the assistance of his body’s immediate-rejoinder self-preservation mechanism, he forced his palm-print into the concrete, and like a fresh load of clothes hanging out to dry, he hung loose.  

   His infamous, one-second lived cry alarmed Maria. She whirled her head around, gun stretched outward. She did not, could not, see anything more than ten feet through the fog and thought the yelp was a mind-teaser and about-faced, content with her mission.

   While feeling the prickling of hard rubbles eating away at his submerged skin, dirty rainwater on top of whatever else poured down slapping his head as a note to self,
if you ever get out of this, promise you’ll listen to your elders for now on
. He could have just fell and found his way back to the surface, but he was afraid of what he might have encountered below the city, in a dark and creepy, wet tunnel, filling with more of the filth that collected on his baggy attire. Plus, if the water reached above his 5ft. 7in. height, he couldn’t swim, and he would have perished, succumbed in a shitty departure. Then, the loaded gun in his waist slipped down his leg, and plopped into the underground river. A sign he didn’t require the company, perchance.

   “Maria!” Baker called.

   She looked back, and although she did not see anyone, this time she recognized Baker’s plead to be Baker, and waited to hear where his hollow voice arose.

   “Help!” he whimpered, struggling to maintain his grip until help arrived.

   The water was not going to let up as long as the rain continued, and even then, it wouldn’t stop for some long period of time after. Baker begun to slip further, lost his grip. Caught the tarmac just at the edge, straining, tugging, as if he’d done more than enough reps on a pull-up bar and unable to stick his chin above it, while the H2O played Crabs in the Bucket with his hoe-card.

   Then he lost his clutch entirely.             

  Maria grabbed his wrist just as he let go, pulled him up and out the manhole, coldly looked him in the eye and said, “Come on. Maybe next time you’ll listen and stay put. Now stick with me, we have to hurry.”

   Baker nodded in agreement. Maria thought of whacking his ass one good time, and then decided to chew him out later.

   She turned back to The End.

   Baker gazed to the heaven above, lipped, “Thank you!” and took off behind her.

  He’d gotten to the center of the street, behind a doo-doo brown, antique car-truck, abandoned, doors ajar and sitting on flat tires, looked inside the driver’s side door to find the mustard yellow leather upholstery had been repeatedly sliced, as if someone knew about 50K being stashed somewhere in the bucket seats but was never found. Maybe it was. The damp padding unleashed a foul odor and a couple loose singles that he picked up and shoved in his soaked pocket. How many people do you know would have done that? Who could blame him? What would you do?

   He looked up at the fiery apartment complex he’d barely recognized from the damage, face showered with the driving rain; and a notorious rumble shook the dampened ground. A quaking thunder followed by an intense strobe-affecting lightning that struck harder than before.

   During the strike, he witnessed heavy smoke begin to exit the building from its furthest, tailed by more increasing flames. He looked to Maria. She neared the entrance of the leading connecting building. He rushed to keep up.

   The furthest building began to crumble from the inside-out. Maria stopped in her tracks, from beyond the inconvenient darkness of the apartments opening, dust and pebbles sprinkling on the concrete before her. Heard the voice of her cousin’s squealing echoing from a distance, and growing, “We’re almost there!” through the doorway.

   Maria charged the door, stood amid the shade and night, hot dust and burning debris. “I’m here! Through here! Hurry, the building’s collapsing.” she yelled, more anxious of her confidant’s returned than fretful of what dangers the wave of sand and rock fragments could instill upon her life.

    “Run!” Rebekah spilled back, as they closed in.

   Maria stuck her wet head deeper into the darkened doorway, a heavy smoke seeped out of the hall. At the end of The End, the whole building, falling apart, the heavy smog attached to it, spreading out across the vicinity.

   Then, a small, wet hand grabbed her wrist.

   “Let’s go!” Baker squeezed and tugged.

   Maria, in shock, angered. “No! What are you—” She jerked back, looked down the street. A dense smoke traveled in her direction. She stared back into the darkness. “Huurry!” she screamed.

   A howl came from somewhere inside the building… and another.

   The dark grey smog from inside the building thickened just before Maria and Baker acquired the first glimpse of their companions. Ann was first, Jim and Rebekah only a few paces behind, holding up Girder in between them. Maria and Baker backed away just as they made it out of the building, and they all sped from the dying neighborhood, dust and debris of the disassembling structures pulling up on their hind parts faster than a chronic ejaculator to a three dollar whore.  

   With ray being aided by two people, there was no time for the Six to make it back to the rest of their group before the cloud caught up. After crossing the street from the apartments, in between Piper and Alder Street, Baker had led the way to the porch of a boarded up duplex on the left side of Piper. The downstairs windows, boarded from the outside, and oddly, upstairs, the boards were inside. He leaped at the hardwood door, a thudding kick toward the lock, but was rejected completely without creating even the slightest dent. That was odd. The thug that power kicked the exact same door on the other dupe a couple blocks over made it look easy.

   The smoke was only ten seconds behind.

   Between the rain, the rumbling and other unusual hullabaloos, Baker, the closest one to the door, made out tugging noises and lowered his head to the door crack, focused.

   “Move out the way!” Jim instructed, letting go of Girder, charging for the door with the intentions of knocking it off the hinges.

   The door miraculously opened.

   “Quickly!” said a man’s voice from inside.

   Lightening blew up in rapid flicks.

   Jim, surprised, froze for a moment in mid-sprint, stunned someone was there. Without a thought, Baker rushed inside. Ann and Maria G6’d in behind him. Rebekah and Girder moved up the stairs, Jim turned to assist. Once they were inside, the entry shut, and the harsh force of the wreckage-filled dust cloud pounded on the door behind them.

   The duplex, darkened but warm, the sounds of heavy wood, maybe a China cabinet, screeched on the hard tiles behind the Six and came to a rest at the door. The thunder rumbled once more. Fragile objects in the house rattled off the shelves, crashed to the kitchen tiles. Behind the Six, glass trembled. The rumbling continued, and increased in strength. The next sound, a million solid fist pounds by the Jolly Green giant on steroids, cut with LSD, hallucinating a Gofer the Groundhog Experience, using his jolly green fist as the monumental sledgehammer of virtue to
The End
. And
The End
had become just that.

   A few scattered notes throughout the house began to awe in the darkness, both male and female, children’s distorted cries from above, and then, the final smack of Valley’s End. Everything she threw at them, against the dupe. And the commotion outside gradually weakened, replaced with the exhausted huffs of six incredibly blessed parties.

   A lighter flickered nearby, and a candle lit, trailed by another, and another. The house began to slowly present itself in its totality, cluttered with tough citizens, displaced survivors. Up the stairs and across the squeaky clean balcony, and most likely in the rooms – the children were missing – the people stood in a welcoming, but most disturbing silence. There were men and women, young and older, the ones that most stuck out were those who held the candles. However, their eyes told their story. They’d lost everything. Not just their belongings, the entire neighborhood, obliterated. They had prepared themselves for that day, knowing that after four days of the buildings undergoing heavy fire, without any order, it was bound to happen. The worst of the worst took place during that stretch, a terrorized sentiment no man, woman or child should have to live through. The truth is, these people
did
live through it, and they couldn’t be any more upset than they were. But they were thankful it was finally over.

   And the Six, gazed their sights upon the surviving residents of Valley’s End.

  “We thank you.” Rebekah informed the one who saved their lives.

   Out of the other seven who did, the one who saved their lives was the last to start burning a candle. The outline of his face embossed a man in his prime, a mountaineer or high ranking biker gang member, maybe both. Full mustache and imperial beard, red and black flannel that failed to hide his beer belly, with dark colored denim jeans. His footwear was under investigation, hidden through the darkness below his knees, could have been hiking or working boots, or a solid pair of black Durango’s, imaginably with the cowboy spikes in the back. Could have even been a pair of running shoes. No telling through the dark. Maybe he sported a pair of Duckweeds or pink bunny slippers.

   Whatever the case may have been, the Six were grateful of his perfectly-timed kind gesture, and they all took that silent moment to respectfully acknowledge his deed as Rebekah did before them.

   “You’re all welcome to stay,” he said. “My home is yours.”

   He talked as if he hadn’t heard anything about their plan, like word didn’t spread through
The End
about the group formed to lead the remaining survivors to the docks. Maybe word hadn’t spread that far. At the break of dawn, Rebekah, Ann, Maria and Baker, and the rest of their group hidden away in the duplex up another street, accompanied by a larger group that should have been making its way to Maison Parkway, held a rally on top of a ten story building that was protected like the Carter from New Jack City. More than two hundred residents were gathered together by the head honcho, Billy Rain. Survivors, a cabbie that went by the name Mac, a delivery guy known as Conrad, along with Frank, Brea, Neshia and Chase, of the Wildes family, were supposed to spread the valuable news.

   For whatever reason the blood worm didn’t bait the big fish, Rebekah had a leave-no-man-behind attitude that complemented her authority qualities rather fondly. She expressed to the people of Valley’s End what they needed to know about their situation, the truth about Sworn, and what the original group envisioned on ensuring to stop Sworn and his terrorist organization. She informed them of the courageous citizens and the lives they saved, the lives that were lost during their trials. But she left out one main article, that Jim and Girder sided, maybe even participated, with the same group of pillagers that destroyed their homes. And she hoped that if they did recognize them by their all-black, baggy attire with hoods – which they did – then they would put their ailing differences aside until the bigger problem was abolished.  

   The lumberjack biker, all-hands-down, took to the crowd of people on the first floor and walked dead center, evaporated in the clutter that surrounded him, leaving the Six to wonder what they murmured. It resembled a systematized cult that had been concealed behind closed doors – like what secret organization isn’t – and decided to come out the closet with the storm. Only this cult wasn’t the traditional robes, blood and sacrifice.

   “What are they doing?” Ann slipped in, speaking to Rebekah in a hushed tone, eyes on the cluster.

   “Don’t know,” she answered.

   Maria, getting the jitters, looked to all the angered grills of the welcoming strangers that escalated up the stairs and across the balcony. Not feeling too comfortable knowing the devil whispered, not to be judgmental by their orchestration, but she clenched her sidearm, index finger pointing toward the missing floor, ready to tighten up with a tremor that would cause her to pull the trigger, let off a shot due to a self-made diagnostic case of discriminating arthritis. Her self-diagnosis never – for the most part – had an outbreak on fellow human beings, but if something was to go down, she would be
pre
pared for it, just in case.

   “This isn’t good.” Baker stated.

   Ann asked, “What’s that smell?”

   Nobody answered.

   Maria looked to Baker. Baker’s head lowered. He was surly embarrassed.

   Jim and Girder held their awakening silence. They had a feeling they knew what the lumberjack biker and his roommates were gabbing about. After all, Jim and Girder were a part of Trivo’s crew, Rain’s posse. They all dressed alike, and they were all responsible for what happened to Valley’s End in the eyes of the Valley’s End survivors. If that was the lumberjack biker’s topic of discussion, then Jim and Girder were in trouble and already expected it.

   That explained why Jim stood at the door, quailed when it suddenly opened seconds before the dust launched an attack. That was the reason Girder was comfortable enough to burn
a
bag of that good shit
– as he would say it – in the apartment, kick back and light a candle; because they’d run the neighborhood out of the neighborhood. After one look to each other, they put on their NFL Gameday faces, gripped their weapons, finger on the triggers, and stood on guard awaiting their long thought of blaze of glory.

  What Jim and Girder did not know, Rebekah and Ann already knew of Centre City’s little run-in with
The End.
Trivo told them of it before sticking his hand in that grocery bag booby-trap.

   The lumberjack biker emerged from the crowd, eyebrows low.

   “You
must
put your differences behind you.” Rebekah said, once again adding a stripe on the sleeve for her honesty, revealing her byline of what had taken place and who was involved, stepping ahead of the Six, tucking her twin XDM in her lower-rear holster. “Our main objective is getting to the docks… and the cavalry should be here any minute. What do you say?”

   The lumberjack biker looked over to Jim and Girder. Then he looked to Baker, and back to Rebekah. “Agreed…” he said. “But… then what?”

   Jim and Girder let go of their triggers.

   “Only you can resolve your quarrels.” Rebekah answered. “But we need to come together for now. What happened here is over… and we
must
move on before it’s too late.”

   Maria stepped forward, gun in hand, and looked upon the survivors. “Gather all your equipment, all the necessities… and arm yourselves with anything you can find. If you have a gun, don’t pull the trigger unless you have to. Once a shot is fired, it’ll summon anything within the area to our location.”

   Rebekah added, “We stay together, we stay alive. We move out at once.”

   The lumberjack biker raised his right arm, extended his blubbery index and middle fingers beyond the Six, and flagged his two fingers up and down toward the men by the door that shoved the China cabinet in its place.

   The slim character on the right of the China wore a quarter-length black leather jacket over a ruffled Hawaiian button up and blue jeans; the tad-bit bigger young man, opposite him, dressed in a white raincoat with the Red Cross Blue Shield emblem in large print across his back – their shoes probably the same as the lumberjack biker’s. Both of them stared to Jim and Girder as if they couldn’t wait until the event was over and done with, so they could finally extract their revenge while the thought was still fresh on the brain. Similar to how Baker felt about avenging his birth mother’s death, and Girder felt about Jim leaving him to rot – even though they were still together – mentally staging the perfect time to abandon their hostility in a rampaging fit of self-righteous anger.  

   After the intense stare-down, that lasted for about three sizing-up seconds from both sides, the China Cabinet Boys slowly but surely removed the cabinet from in front of the door.

   The lumberjack biker reached underneath his gut and came back with a small, shiny .380 reserve pistol; a girly gun for such a manly man. “We got a boat to catch.”